Five Considerations for New Managers,
Plus a Bonus Consideration for Business Owners

Ridiculing the role of
managers is so commonplace that its trite. When have you
ever read Dilbert and seen a positive image of the pointy-haired
boss? I cant remember a single one. How often do you
see negative images of him? Id guess the average to be about
four days/week. When someone you know is promoted to a first time
manager, remember to congratulate her on her elevation to know-nothing,
pointy-hairedness-uh, make that on her promotion. New managers
generally face the same challenges as seasoned managers, but they
also have to contend with a few special issues. In this article,
well examine some of these challenges from the perspective
of the new manager.

The new manager may
encounter any number of unfamiliar job elements. Friends and colleagues
have suddenly become subordinates. There is a need to hire people,
or give feedbackboth positive and negative. Suddenly the
new manager must plan how other people will use their time; in
fact, his or her own time will have different demands placed on
italthough the new manager may not really understand that
yet. Generally the most difficult challenge for the new manager
is to learn to let go of some of the technical tasks (whether
its baking a pie or writing a computer program) and delegate
to other peoplepeople who might be less capable or who might
simply take a different approach.

Unfortunately, new managers
rarely get adequate support to help them grow into their new roles.
When they do get training, it is likely just a few days on project
management or time management. There is an expectation that everything
will be assimilated and the new manager will be fully prepared.
Training can be effective but much more so when accompanied by
ongoing supportsupport that coaching can provide. I believe
that good coaching is more important than training and is effective
in the absence of training.

Everyone who works has
some level of management responsibilitiestime management
at the very least. But upon reaching the rung on the corporate
ladder where one carries the title of manager, there
are a number of changes one must make in order to be effective
in the new role. This article is about those changes and how to
help the new manager grow into the role.

1. The role has changedand
there is value to the new responsibilities

New managers often have
some ambivalence about their new role. Who hasnt heard the
refrain that all managers know how to do is go to meetings? While
there are certainly cases where thats true, they are the
exceptions. Even if the sentiment were always true, some meetings
are worthwhile. Just imagine how hard it would be to build a product
if no one knew the details of what it was supposed to look like
or how it would operate. If nobody decides what the product or
service will be, it will be hard to build; if the marketing and
sales team doesnt know when the product will be ready, it
will be hard to coordinate a splashy release and sell the product.

Without someone coordinating
the efforts of the staff, it would be difficult to keep the development,
or sales, or support, or any effort progressing smoothly. As project
complexity increases, coordinating the efforts of various groups
becomes more important. Helping the new manager not only understand
these facts but also appreciate their validity will help him to
value his new role. Helping the new manager to see that he is
also achieving an added measure of control over his own time and
professional life can also help him to see his new role as a positive
change.

2. Time management

Remember when you were
a new parent? (If youve never been a parent of small children,
then think about a time when someone you know was.) Remember when
the new parent stumbled into work glassy eyed and reported that
things that simple things that used to take minutes, like putting
on a coat and leaving the house, now took the better part of an
hour? Welcome to time management for managers.

In a corporate setting,
the new manager is typically a team leader and not a full time
manager. As a result, what often happens is that the new manager
knows how long technical tasks take but does not understand how
much time or effort managerial tasks take. So, she either grossly
underestimates the amount of time for managerial tasks, or she
may not even realize all of the new tasks that will come with
the job. This will lead to an unrealistically optimistic estimate
of the amount of time available for technical work. What this
misestimation often means in practice is that she will plan approximately
95% of her time doing the same technical she did before her promotion
and will end up working another 50% of her time performing various
managerial tasks. After a while, those 60+ hour weeks get pretty
old and the manager gets tired and disillusioned.

It doesnt have
to be this way. Through coaching, you can help the new manager
understand her new role and adjust her expectations appropriately.

3. Delegation

When my wife asks me
to do something for her, she sometimes gets frustrated if I dont
do it the way she would haveand she has been a manager for
years.

Delegation is one of
the most difficult challenges for new managers. Why? Because managers,
like most of us, are afraid of the unknown; and this is all new
territory for the new manager. Thoughts like Im responsible
for it, so what will happen to me if� resonate for the new
manager. For example, Im responsible for the product,
so what will happen to me if they dont build it well?
or �dont do it the way I would have done it?
The end result is a lot of stress about how can I possibly
trust anyone else? To help the new manager learn to delegate
and also to be able to sleep at night, you can coach him to remember
that his job has changed. He now has responsibility to get the
project done, but he also has another major task: developing his
staff. It can help to remind him that the people he will rely
on are the same ones who were doing the job before he became the
manager.

The flipside of knowing
how to delegate is knowing what to delegateand what not
to. Managers should strive to keep themselves off the critical
path. This is a delicate subject since one of the reasons for
his promotion was probably his accomplishments in a staff role.
On the other hand, as a manager, hell face situations that
require immediate attention at the same time as a critical deliverable
is due. As a coach, you can help the new manager devise a number
of strategiesperhaps having an assistant to back him up
in case he needs to do other things, or perhaps taking important
tasks that wont block delivery if they slip a bit.

4. Micro-managing &
abdicating

After delegating, the
new manager faces the challenge of being appropriately involvedneither
micro-managing nor abdicating responsibility. Micro managers arent
really delegating. They spend so much time and energy making sure
that someone else does just what they would in the same way they
would that theyre hardly amplifying their own time or skills
at all. On the other hand, managers who never check in on what
their employees are doing run the risk of having their people
build a lot of square pegs for projects where the holes are round.

A coach can help a new
manager to be involved to the appropriate level by asking questions
like whats the complexity of the task being delegated?
and whats the experience and talent level of the person
doing the work? If the person doing the work is experienced
and talented, close supervision is unnecessary, but it is important
to check periodically to ensure that the work fits the requirements.
Alternatively, if the person doing the work is inexperienced,
or if there has been a history of performance problems, the coach
can help the new manager to be more directly involved with the
work while helping the employee to develop.

One role the coach can
play in both of these situations is to help the manager establish
standards and boundaries for the groups work product. For
example, standards might include levels of product quality while
boundaries could include expectations about the amount of supervision
required or the expectation of cooperation among team members.

5. Friends who are now
subordinates

When I first started
working for myself, I used to joke that I would have to be careful
what I told myself because I was pretty sure that I couldnt
trust my boss.

The new manager may well
find that relations with some of her former friends and colleagues
change. Its easy to say that personal and professional life
are separate and to act appropriately for each situation. Just
imagine that you, as manager, have decided not to give a friend
a piece of a project that she wanted, or that you have to tell
a friend that he didnt do an acceptable job on a project.
It is not, however, realistic. Every situation is different, but
this is an area in which a coach can be invaluable to someone
in a position of authority for the first time. Being a sounding
board, and offering other perspectives and insights can help the
manager do whats right professionally and put the least
strain on the personal relationship with the managers friend.

Bonus: Business owners
as new managers

The business owner as
new manager faces a few unique variations on the new corporate
manager theme. The business wouldnt be there without him.
It wouldnt have flourished to the point of needing employees
without him. The business owner understands that the business
is really his. For the new manager, this additional dynamic can
substantially complicate the situation for a new employeeor
interloper.

If the employee is in
the technical area where the business owner is the expert, then
the new manager may tend toward micro-management. If the employee
is in an area where the business owner is not an expert, the new
manager may tend to abdicate responsibility completely.

As a coach in this environment,
you have both the normal coaching challenges to help the business
owner develop as a manager and the additional challenge of helping
him welcome new employees. These are high value areas to coach
in, since the business owners attitude about them and success
in developing will significantly impact the likelihood of success
for the business. Helping the business owner to understand that
the best employees will be those who have a measure of authority
will help to develop and retain employees and make operating the
business easier and less stressful. Helping the business owner
to understand that, even in an area of the business where he has
little expertise, he will be best served if he understands enough
to be intelligently involved with the important decisions will
both help him develop as an entrepreneur and improve the chances
for his business success.

Coaching: opportunities
for impact

There are many opportunities
for a coach to make a substantial, positive impact on the new
manager and, by extension, on the corporation. But coaching is
still new to most corporations so you are most likely to find
receptivity to the idea in environments where there is already
a culture of openness to new ideas. In that kind of organization,
the company may invest in coaching for the new managerwhich
certainly puts a positive stamp on the process. With the positive
reinforcement, the new manager will come to understand that coaching
can help successful people become even more successful. That can
lead to a very beneficial relationship for all concerned.